Just bought my first Blu Ray movie. Planet Earth -- not a surprising choice, I know :p

Cool! I think that movie sounds great. I want to get Planet Earth and The Blue Planet too.  I just think that it is amazing that something created basically by accident, by a multitude of seemingly random processes can turn out to be one of the most beautiful things ever witnessed and am practically enthralled every time I see one of these space-view of earth kind of movies.

 I posted this dayyyyyyyys ago, lulz.

 Excellent choice.  I haven't seen this series yet, but I heard it looks stunning in HD.

I'd also recommend PotC 1-3 and Kingdom of Heaven.

The director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven truly is an excellent movie.  It sucks that Fox made Ridley Scott cut so much out for the theatrical release, causing the film to get horrible reviews and bomb at the box office.   The theatrical version really does suck, and unjustly tarnishes Ridley Scott's superb record (Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, etc.)

I have read this entire thread (took me a week!) because I thought it would help me figure out which format to get when putting an order on Blade Runner Ultimate Collectors Set. I wish you guys would hurry up and figure out which one is better. I trust both versions would have the same content.

 visually they look just about identicle. There is more room for BD to grow visually and with audio due to higher bitrate and larger capacity. But prettymuch all the dual format releases look identicle.

At this stage its just people who despise sony vs people who own PS3's or REALLY care about future specs. Looking at the numbers its obvious, PC world gives us more storage, cinema gives us more potential with space and bitrate, the technology OVERALL goes to BD. HD DVD has interactivity and internet connection its the advantage, but interactivity is now gone as the PS3 was just upgraded to profile 1.1 and Panasonic has released a full spec player.

So, then it comes down to studios. If you havent bought in yet, id wait until after CES, beginning of Janurary, as announcement should take place there that should hopefully give us a better idea as to the future of HDM. As it stands, Disney, Fox, Sony, MGM, Columbia, Lionsgate, Miramax, BVHE, Warner are available on BD.....Universal, Focus, Paramount, Dreamworks, Warner, (select weinstein) are available on HD DVD. BD players can be had now for $300 whereas HD DVD players can be had for $220 on amazon (i think thats the lowest perhaps $199) Movies are pretty much identicle.

So if you can wait, wait until mid january and this might be on its way ot being over. If you need ot buy now, ask yourself if the extra $100 is worth the BD studios at the expense of HD DVD studios and if youd rather have the POTENTIAL for 200gb of storage for your PC and POTENTIALLY the optimization of audio and video due to higher bitrate and extra space for lossless audio. If you dont want those things for the extra $100, dive into HD DVD. As long as you know the differences whichever you decide should be good.

David Vaughn has made his weekly "prediction"...

61:39 BD:HD

Ouch.

This week the major releases were Harry Potter 1-5 on both formats and the Bourne Ultimatum on HD DVD. Both sides had BOGOs at Best Buy but HD DVD had an extra BOGO at Amazon. The Bourne Ultimatum was the top seller on either format for the week.

This was HD DVD's week to win it, but they failed. Horribly.

am I the only one here not impressed with Planet earth?
I like the series and all but i expected a lovelier picture on HD.
i thought it would look better than Blu-ray movies..

Just one exclusive, and almost everything else for both sides, how was this supposed to be HD-DVD's week?

And how is 61% horrible, when it's a better margin than last week? 

After some research into it I decided on getting the HD-DVD set.  Its not that I have anything against Blu-ray  but I have found that some HD-DVD releases have some more extra features and I am a real sucker for extras.  The extra amount of space on Blu-ray didn't really change much for me because when you think about it, it only really gives an advantage for the PC industry.   There are only so many hours of film I could sit and watch without a break so having a really large movie disc doesn't make that much sense.  HD-DVD discs are cheaper to make so it is just as easy to include another disc than to cram everything on the one.

Bitrate I assume refers to improved picture quality?  Now that we have High Defenition picture will it really make that much difference if one is slightly better than the other?  That goes for sound too.  At the moment the sound in movies is pretty darn good so how much more improvment is possible?  We are getting to the point where it is going to cost you a lot of extra money to get a little improvment in performance so it really isn't worth it.  Besides all that I would assume that both parties would work to improve their format over time, so not knowing what the future holds, trying to guess which one will have the better features overall in the end is pointless.

One important point that needs to be made about blu-ray is that fact that most of its install base consists of  PS3 units.  Even after you determine how many of those PS3 owners will actually buy any movies you need to accept the fact that very few of those people would've bought the console for the fact they can play blu-ray movies on it.  A great majority of them would be just gamers and are going to be far more interested in building their games collection than gaining a good collection of blu-ray movies.  On the other hand, those who buy stand alone players are obviously people who are interested in only movies and will likely buy plenty of them.  HD-DVD is clearly winning in player sales.

 Another thing the blu-ray group needs to worry about is image.  It won't be long until blu-ray becomes closely associated with the PS3 and the PS3 is a games machine.  It is not a home theatre system and not many people will buy it for that purpose.  At the moment there are high blu-ray sales because the PS3 is new and owners are proud and curious with being able to play HD movies on it.  You can expect blu-ray sales to be high in the near future but will eventualy fade while the HD-DVD will ramp up sales in the longer term.  HD-DVD will not become associated to the X360 game system in people minds like blu-ray will, and that means it will be seen as more of an official HD format and consumers will accept it better.

Anyway, I havn't actually bought a player yet and I will probably wait for the dual format players to become cheap which means my brand new Blade Runner Collectors set will be gathering dust probably for at least another year.  I had to buy it now though because it is a limited edition.

This has been an opinon from an average consumer with not that much interest in technical specifications and who just wants to enjoy a good movie now and in the future.